Cuba takes the gold
Unlike many other products of American pop culture, baseball has never really caught on beyond a handful of Caribbean and Asian countries.
Now baseball and softball are on the bubble as Olympic organizers look to reduce the number of sports contested at the Summer Games.
The continued dominance of Cuba in baseball and the U.S. in softball during the Olympic tournaments here may not help the case for keeping those sports in the Summer Games.
Cuba gained its third title in four Olympics with a 6-2 win over the surprising Australians in baseball’s gold-medal game Wednesday in Helliniko, Greece.
Cuba relied on a young team because Omar Linares, Orestes Kindelan and other stars of the last three Olympics have retired.
Japan came to Greece with the best players from its professional leagues, but its would-be dream team fell to Australia in the semifinals. The Japanese settled for bronze with an 11-2 win Wednesday against Canada.
The U.S., which won gold four years ago in Sydney, failed in a regional qualifying tournament for the Athens Olympics.
Australia’s silver was the first baseball medal for the country, which does not even have a top-level baseball league. The Aussie women also took home the silver in softball.
But their Cinderella run to the final does not mean that baseball has gained more than a tenuous foothold in Australia.
Fans who came to cheer the Aussies in the gold-medal game freely admitted that they knew little about the sport.
Wednesday’s game was the first for the Moodys of Blairgowrie, Australia.
“We’re here tonight because it’s Australia playing,” Kerri Moody said.
Her husband, John, and daughter Jade said they wore baseball caps to the game because the hats are emblazoned with the Australian flag. They do not call them baseball caps.
“In Australia, they’re just normal caps,” John Moody said.
Baseball and softball will be part of the Summer Games in 2008. Beyond Beijing, their future is uncertain.
The International Olympic Committee recently drew up a list of criteria to determine which sports will remain and which should be cut. The criteria include the level of competition, development of the sport in new parts of the world, media interest and attendance.
The gold-medal game drew 6,950 fans to the 7,000-seat baseball stadium built here specifically for the games.
Jones in long jump final
Marion Jones began her 2004 Olympics on the 13th day of the Games and got two pieces of good news: She easily advanced to the long jump final and she was chosen to run in the semifinals of the women’s 400-meter relay today.
Jones, who didn’t qualify for the U.S. team in the 100 and withdrew from the 200 trials, will run the second relay leg. Angela Williams, a four-time NCAA champion at USC, will lead off, followed by Jones, 100-meter silver medalist Lauryn Williams and 100-meter finalist LaTasha Colander.
Jones’ participation had been in doubt because she’s being investigated for possible doping infractions, an offshoot of the doping scandal shaking the sport. She has not been charged with anything and has said she has never taken banned substances, but if she ran and was later found to have committed a violation, everyone who ran in the relay could lose any medal won.
“I’m in a different space now,” said Jones, who fouled on her first jump Wednesday but soared 6.70 meters (21 feet 11 inches) to surpass the qualifying standard on her second jump. She skipped her third turn.
Rezazadeh lifts a world record
Maybe Shane Hamman should challenge Hossein Rezazadeh to a round of golf.
Hamman, an eight-time American national weightlifting champion, and 15 of the strongest men in the world took their shots at unseating Rezazadeh as Olympic super-heavyweight lifting gold medalist Wednesday. They all wound up admiring him from afar, applauding the Iranian giant for breaking his own world record.
Four lifts into the competition, Rezazadeh had clinched his second gold medal. Then he set his sights on a world clean-and-jerk record – 581 pounds.
After failing in his first attempt, he succeeded on his second try. With his field-leading mark in the snatch portion of the event, 460.5 pounds, Rezazadeh, 26, lifted 1,041.5 total pounds, equaling his world-record total at the 2000 Sydney Olympics.
Rezazadeh’s total lift was 38.5 pounds better than the 1,003 pounds hefted by silver medalist Viktors Scerbatihs of Latvia. Velichko Cholakov of Bulgaria took the bronze at 986.5 pounds.
Speedo-MTV party a mixed crowd
Olympic swimmers Ian Thorpe, Natalie Coughlin and Amanda Beard, who’d spent the past couple of weeks stroking through the water, instead got a chance to lounge beside it at a jam-packed beachside party.
The Speedo-MTV soiree, which began Wednesday night but didn’t really get going until the early hours Thursday, also featured on its guest list former Olympians, including track star Michael Johnson, husband-and-wife gymnasts Nadia Comaneci and Bart Conner, and boxer Evander Holyfield.
But the vast majority of the people were just that: regular people, who found their way into the Akrotiri Lounge simplyby buying tickets.